Welcome to my new home.

Wow!

I must come clean, it was not long ago that I was very sceptical about all this social media malarkey. I just couldn’t understand how I could get anyone interested in what I had to say, well not on any great scale anyway.  And what was this Twitter thing for, how can it possibly be used as a business tool?

How wrong was I

Over the last six months I have gone through a step change in my belief in the capabilities of social media.  I have always read blogs and knew that they were a fantastic source of information and knowledge,  I just don’t think that I put two and two together,  I was reading blogs from people who’s commentary and experience I respected,  I just didn’t think that ‘hang on, they are doing just what I think is not worth bothering about, why don’t I just give it a bash?’.  Daft isn’t it.

The thing is I love talking about what I do, and blogging proves very cathartic in a way.  Getting my ideas, opinions and thoughts down rather than keeping them in my head has proved invaluable in formalising my approach to my role and the direction.  This blogging malarkey has changed my life!

Community

Sometimes when you have your head stuck in a program of work,  you tend to loose sight of the bigger picture,  or start to not be able to see the wood from the trees.  One of the most amazing outcomes for me has been the feedback, discussion and advice that I get from the virtual community that I now belong to.  I have had interesting debates with respected colleagues on my blog and theirs, read thought provoking topics that have made me sit back and re-assess my approach to certain topics and deliverables, and even got into a virtual blogging Olympic style debate with two esteemed bloggers from different corners of the world.  Nothing, other than face to face conversation, can match this.

For a brief insight into some of just a select number of key people in this community feel free to visit my ‘links’ page.

Twitter

Probably my biggest change in opinion ever!  I now see twitter as my key communication and knowledge resource, the vast amount of knowledge sharing that occurs on a constant basis is phenomenal.  I have been astonished by how much can be communicated in so few characters. It is a wonderfully powerful tool, one that I was convinced would not be of any commercial use,  how wrong was I.

My new home

I don’t do anything in small doses,  or slowly …  My initial blog (www.mdmblog.charlesblyth.co.uk) was a testing ground,  set up on Blogger for ease and speed of deployment.  Blogger served a purpose, it worked,  I learnt, and I got hooked.  But I want more,  I want to be able to customize and expand the content of my blog,  to create a real online identity that will grow with me as I continue on this journey.  I had to move from Blogger to a self hosted environment that I have full control of, having used Wordpress before,  it wasn’t a hard decision.

I use the term ‘Data Governance on the Front Line’ quite a lot,  and taking that further,  I came up with ‘MDM from the Front Line’ as my blog title.  I am engrossed in the world of MDM at the moment,  so as things stand this title is appropriate to the content that will appear here.  So to refer back to my time in the military,  I have survived boot-camp and have been deployed to the Front Line.

I did have a bit of fun building this site, customizing the theme, and migrating my old posts here, sometimes technology can be fun.

Future

My hopes and goals are that this site continues to grow at pace,  that our community continues to expand and mature and that we all have fun along the way.

Welcome to the front line!

And thanks for your support.

Cheers!

Charles

PS: In the aim of continuous improvement,  please feel free to let me know what you think of this site, and if I can improve it in any way.